


Gifts

by AnnetheCatDetective



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: M/M, Tumblr: pacrimsecretsanta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-28
Updated: 2014-12-28
Packaged: 2018-03-03 23:39:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2892371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnetheCatDetective/pseuds/AnnetheCatDetective
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gifts Newt and Hermann have received, and gifts Newt and Hermann give.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gifts

**Author's Note:**

> For tumblr user corylai, the prompt being 'books, coats'-- two things I happen to be fond of! And of course the first thing I thought of was a little gift-exchanging between the two...

-PROLOGUE-

When Newt was ten years old, his father gave him eight books for the holidays, all science fiction and fantasy, a trend that continued until Newt had to spend his holidays working, far away from home.

At age ten, he’d appreciated them with a fierce, devouring love. The stories were all different, as were the target ages, it didn’t matter. The classics were there, and serial novels based on sci-fi properties, and some that Newt had never heard of before, that the few peers he really interacted with had never read. Books like Time Cat and Half-Magic that felt like his alone in the shadow of their more widely-read cousins. 

And as an adult, traveling between Shatterdomes and not always able to return home for the holidays, nor necessarily to receive mail regularly, Newt still always trusted that his books would be there whenever he was next able to visit. 

-

When Hermann was ten years old, his family did not mark the holidays, beyond his mother slipping chocolate into the hands of her children while their father was at work, and humming softly to herself as she worked in the kitchen on meals a little more elaborate than they normally had. It was an indulgence that their father allowed, as it came with nothing he deemed foolish, and there were always gifts on their birthdays, the Gottlieb children were not deprived of toys and games and things all year round. 

The gifts that they got in winter were practical ones. New socks, new pyjamas, new coats and gloves and boots, things that growing children needed to have replaced with the changing weather. Hermann never had the feeling that he was being deprived of something. Other children might return to school bragging of new bicycles or computer games, but he cared very little about their lives, nor did he care to compare them to his own. They were not his friends, and it did not matter. 

And as an adult, when his parents stopped buying him the things he could buy for himself in the winter, it didn’t matter-- they were not holiday gifts, the lack of them in no way indicated a sudden ceasing of his parents to care, it was only that they were necessities he could provide for himself. And if his mother still insisted upon sending him socks, maybe that was a little bit sentimental on her part… and maybe he appreciated it.

He also appreciated the coat that he was given, upon his arrival at the Vladivostok Shatterdome, a gift that coincided neatly with a holiday which he did not celebrate, but which his friends-- friends!-- from the PPDC Academy did. It was Hermann’s first Christmas, and an entirely secular affair on his part, but it was a very nice one.

-SUNDOWN, DECEMBER 25th 2024-

“They’re shutting down Sydney in four-- in three days’ time.” Hermann sighed.

Newt, on his side of the lab, had left off dealing with kaiju for the day, and was fiddling with some little gadget, an LED bulb lighting as he connected a wire. Busywork, Hermann supposed, while he waited on his mass spec to give him results.

“Yeah, well…” He shrugged, setting his little project down and spinning around in his chair. “That means it’s down to Hong Kong, so we hit ‘em from Hong Kong.”

“Oh, yes, brilliant, Dr. Geiszler. We ‘hit ‘em from Hong Kong’. Have you seen the way they’ve slashed our budgets? Even here we only have maybe a month, the way things are going, and that’s a month with a skeleton crew, a month with the bare minimum-- Do you know how much it costs for a single Jaeger to combat a single kaiju? If we can’t collapse the breach right away… if we can’t…”

“Hey. If we can’t collapse the breach right away, we hold out until we can collapse it.”

“You haven’t seen the budget report, then.”

“I don’t need to. ‘Tis the season, dude. Miracles.”

“You sound utterly preposterous, you’re a grown man, and-- and even if you weren’t, and even if I believed in these ‘Christmas miracles’--”

“I didn’t say Christmas miracles.” Newt quibbled, folding his arms. “I just said miracles. And we could use one, okay, yeah, I get that… but come on. Tonight, of all nights, let’s be a little less doom and gloom.”

“Tonight means absolutely nothing to me, but all right.”

“Methinks the Hermann doth protest too much.” Newt rolled his chair off towards a corner and then back, propelling himself over the line dividing their workspace with a small package in hand.

“Newton--”

“Hey. Dude.” He shook his head, fixing Hermann with a serious expression. “I know I’m not your favorite person and you haven’t exactly been mine for the last, what, seven, eight years either, but… Like, it’s still Christmas and Hanukkah’s just starting, and I know you were raised an agnostic killjoy or whatever, but I’ve also heard you talk about faith a lot for a guy who supposedly has none. Don’t lose it tonight, okay?”

“All right. It’s hardly blind faith, you know, when I am working around the clock to prevent the end of the world. Neither of us is merely sitting around and praying for it.”

“No. But you might work better if you’re not already thinking about how fucked we are. And, um… back to how I know we aren’t each others’ favorite people, but… I got you something anyway.” He thrust the package out. It was wrapped in a couple of layers of printer paper, taped together in a huge, messy attempt at concealing the contents, and across the top layer, Newt had doodled in pen, pictures of kaiju pulling Santa’s sleigh-- and in place of Santa, Cherno Alpha in a santa hat. 

They were by no means masterpieces, but they weren’t bad, and even if Hermann wasn’t going to praise them aloud, he thought the Kaidanovskys would appreciate Santa Cherno-- if not the eight tiny kaiju.

He opened it carefully to preserve the doodles, in spite of Newt’s leg jumping and jiggling in anticipation. 

“‘The Mad Scientist Hall of Fame’...” He read at last, when he had the book in his hands, paper laid aside on his desk. “It looks… very entertaining, Newton, thank you. I’m sorry I didn’t--”

“Dude, forget it. I wasn’t exactly expecting anything.” Newt shook his head.

“Well… next year, if we’re still here.” Hermann shrugged.

-DECEMBER 21st 2025-

It was a bit early for Christmas, but coming in towards the tail end of Hannukah, and the little home they shared was decorated for both-- entirely Newt’s doing, but Hermann hadn’t exactly discouraged the practice. His gifts to Newt so far had been mostly practical, but not boring-- he’d tracked down Godzilla boxer shorts to replace the pair of Newt’s that had gotten too hole-y to keep, and socks with dinosaurs. And, of course, there had been chocolate. 

From Newt, there had been books-- ‘How to Build a Robot Army’ and ‘Where’s My Jetpack’, from the author of the book he’d received the year before, and a couple of novels that came with Newt’s personal recommendation behind them.

Hermann supposed he could have saved Newt’s biggest gift for Christmas, or at the earliest, the final day of Hannukah, but when Newt announced the need to go out to get some last minute gifts in person rather than stay in out of the rain and order them off the internet like a sensible person, Hermann was decided. 

“Wait-- before you go… Ah, would you like some company?” He offered. 

“Are you actually offering to brave the pre-Christmas crowds with me? Wow, this must be love.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, would I let you live in my house if it wasn’t-- if it wasn’t that? Besides, there shouldn’t be crowds, everyone does their shopping online, or they get it done before now. And… I have to get you something else.”

Newt grinned, moving to loop his arms around Hermann’s waist. “You still have shopping to do? And you’re going to lecture me?”

“Only because I can’t let you walk out that door without your good present, which I’d been planning on saving for a better time, but you--” Hermann found himself interrupted by Newt’s lips, and he let the interruption stand. If anything was more fun than lecturing Newt, it was this, after all. “Mm, you are impossible.”

“We could make a day of it.” Newt stroked his arm, one hand settling on the small of Hermann’s back, with barely two inches between their lips. “Go out for a little bite to eat, something hot to drink, you can help me pick out presents for your siblings-- I want to. If I’m meeting the family, I want to do it right. Hit up a really cool used bookstore with really tall shelves we can hide in, engage in covert PDA… Share an umbrella.”

“You love me for my umbrella.” Hermann groaned and rolled his eyes, rather theatrically. “It’s been a year since your jacket was destroyed--”

“Eleven months.”

“It’s been eleven months since your jacket was destroyed, you do not need to be in full mourning for it. Why have you not replaced it?”

Newt shrugged, letting Hermann pull away. “I don’t know. It never seemed important? I couldn’t find one I felt the same about. I’m not spending a bunch of money on a good coat I don’t even like. I don’t feel the cold that much, anyway, you know? So it’s not a big deal, it’s not like it’s snowing, it’s just rain and I’ve got a hoodie, I’ll find a new one when they go on sale or something.”

Hermann went to the coat closet to pull his own parka on, trusting in the fact that, being without a coat, Newt never paid any attention whatsoever to the closet or its contents. Newt didn’t even notice this time, when Hermann reached in yet again to pull out a second.

“Well you aren’t catching your death out there on my watch.” He shoved the leather bomber jacket into Newt’s hands. “I-- I know it isn’t exactly… I know it’s not-- Happy holidays, Newton.”

It wasn’t like the leather jacket Newt had lost, it wasn’t quite his regular style, but there were custom patches, one with his name and one on the shoulder that said ‘K-SCI’, and another with a stylized Trespasser head, over the left breast, and even if it wasn’t ‘rock star’, Hermann had put a fair amount of thought, and money, and time waiting on the commissioned bits, and he didn’t want to just stand there waiting to know he’d made any right decisions along the way, but he had to know that the gift was at least appreciated.

He didn’t have to wait long. Newt’s stunned silence quickly gave way to an excited whoop, and he abandoned his old sweatshirt in favor of the new jacket.

“Seriously? Hermann, this is awesome! I’m now the Indiana Jones of xenobiology!” He threw himself at Hermann for another kiss, another two, another three kisses. “I won’t even correct your weird assertions about catching my death, that’s how much I like my present.”

“Well, I’m glad.” Hermann blushed faintly. There was a break in the clouds outside, a soft grey light as the rain let up, and he left his umbrella behind in favor of having a hand free to offer to Newt. A trip to this bookstore and a little something to eat out someplace nice would be a pleasant way of spending the day, and more pleasant if they could walk arm in arm or hand in hand.


End file.
